


Names of the Stars

by jackaalope



Category: True Detective
Genre: Brokeback Mountain AU, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-08
Updated: 2014-12-08
Packaged: 2018-02-28 14:45:23
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,034
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2736449
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jackaalope/pseuds/jackaalope
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“Marty,” Rust said, and then something in his countenance broke, and the space between them closed, their arms fastening so hard around each other that they swayed on their feet, Marty clapping his palm against Rust’s back over and over, muttering, “Jesus Christ, Jesus fucking Christ, you son of a bitch, Jesus Christ.”</p>
            </blockquote>





	Names of the Stars

**Author's Note:**

  * For [blackeyedblonde](https://archiveofourown.org/users/blackeyedblonde/gifts).



> This is a(n early) birthday present for @blackeyedblonde who not only, as a writer, constantly amazes me and everybody else, but who also, as a friend, inspires me every day to "just keep livin". Hannah, you are one of the kindest, most intelligent people I have ever met in my life and I just hope you know how much you mean to me. I don't know what I would've done the past few months without you. HAPPY HAPPY HAPPY BIRTHDAY!!! Hope it's the best one yet, but the worst of the ones to come.

Marty’s up out of a long dream at four, bare chest and bare feet cold, belly hung out over his gray flannel pants. Slits of wind are whistling hard through the cracks in the windows, and the dog’s in the corner, whining with sad eyes, greying fur bristled up. He shuffles over to her, sleepy, reaches down a hand and thumbs at her ears, but she skirts under the table, tails drooping, as the sounds of rising thunder thrum in the air up outside. And Marty knows he’d better get going, out of here, because the roads could be bad later today and the girls want him home for Christmas Eve—or maybe, more likely, only he wants to be home for Christmas Eve. But he’s gonna go anyway. And his eyes are tired as he goes and settles a little pot of water on the stove, makes the red circle beneath it glow. He looks at that, and he rubs his eyes, and behind them is the image of the campfire that was in his dream.

When his head clears, the water is boiling, and he takes the lid off and turns the stove down, carefully drips the water over the grounds, through the paper towel in his mug. And then, as he’s sitting down at the table, a flash of the dream shuttles over his vision again and he’s lost, hopelessly.

 

***

 

They were two tall boys with hard faces and low voices, raised hundreds of miles apart in the same way because the miles didn’t matter after a certain point out there—it was all the same landscape: hard ground and little green heathers and fences and the occasional broken-down ranch. Martin Hart and Rustin Cohle. Marty’d signed up with the state after a few years working odd jobs, maintenance, once he’d realized he wasn’t getting any scholarship for football and dropped out of high school. And Rust had done the same, except he made most of his money off trapping wild hare, selling their pelts to a local shop. Marty was engaged by that point, to a girl called Maggie Peters, and he was saving up that summer for a little wedding in the church they’d both grown up in—and Rust had jabbed him about that, told him he was likely living out the same sad life his parents had, and that his kids would too, over and over, until Marty pointed out that Rust’s daddy’d been a trapper too, ‘til he’d died, and that’d shut Rust up.

They’d met on the same side of a desk at Forest Service, a man with yellowed teeth and fat moles on his neck giving them curt instructions. The Service had a flock of sheep they kept up on the big mountain—Brokeback, it was called, ominously—in the middle of the preserve, and they were to pitch two tents up there, one on either side of where the sheep were penned, take up a rifle and two dogs each, and look after them for the summer. Make sure no animals got at them. It was easy enough, and they were going to send them up in the morning, so the two of them spent the afternoon in a bar they found nearby, making only half-comfortable conversation.

Rust, Marty soon found, was no good at talking. He kept his mouth mostly shut; only opened it to disclose he’d been up there on the mountain the last year too, and to slurp beer through his lips. He was tall and young and lean, with terrible posture and the strangest combination of sleepiness and ferocity in his eyes, like someone’d taken a mountain lion and taught it to be human. Marty was broad and muscular, with huge shoulders and a strong jaw, too crude-hewn to be handsome. Still, he’d always thought, he’d been better-looking than Rust in those days. Maybe not after a couple years, but in those days.

They took them up in the morning to the top of the mountain and left them there with one mule, one old mare, four short-furred blue dogs all, from the looks of it, from the same litter, two tents and some supplies for the week—Marty was to head down sometime on Sunday to pick up the next load—and two rifles. Rust nodded at Marty, picked up his smaller tent, and went off to pitch it on the opposite side of the pasture, so far across that he was just a black dot in the horizon by the time Marty looked for him again.

He came back an hour later to help Marty finish off securing his the campsite, help him get the fire started, and Marty was grateful for, if a little embarrassed by, his help.

They ate a silent dinner of canned pasta in meat sauce, and then Rust got up, muttered, “Make sure to put the fire out before you go to sleep. Back in the morning,” brushed off his hands, and hiked back across the ridge just as the sun was setting.

Marty waited an hour or so, finishing his beer and a couple more, watching the sun go down until it was black, all black with only the cold stars big and uninterrupted up overhead, and the owls had started hooting and he saw the light of Rust’s fire spark up in the distance. Then he went to bed.

 

They fell into an easy routine, soon enough. On mornings, Marty woke at what felt like, but was far from, the crack of dawn to find Rust already settled down on his log beside a fire he’d re-kindled, whistling softly along with the birds in the trees and sipping coffee with a shot or two of whiskey, his knees splayed out and his forearms resting on them, hunched over. He waited to eat until Marty got up, and then they wolfed down some toast speared on thin sticks and held over the fire, then Rust fucked off to the other side of the pasture for a couple hours before he came back for lunch. They ate out of cans in silence, and then he left again. Marty waited for him—not because he particularly cared for the guy (he thought, almost convincingly, at the time) but just because he was someone to talk to. He came back for dinner. He told Marty to put out the fire when he left.

The days became a rhythm like a heartbeat. The landscape became Marty’s body.

 

“What d’you think God’s thinking, looking at us up here on the top of this mountain, just sitting here all peaceful and gentle-like, watching over the sheep?”

They were sitting by the fire. The night was warm and still—they’d taken to lingering longer and longer over their dinners.

Rust swallowed a mouthful of whiskey.

“Nothing,” he told him. “God doesn’t exist.”

And Marty’s lips went taut.

“The fuck do you mean, ‘God doesn’t exist’?” Rust just splayed out his palm in an irritable sort of half-shrug. “Man, you go talking like that and… Y’know, people don’t like that. _I_ don’t like that.”

“Yeah,” said Rust. “Don’t reckon I care.”

Marty glared. “Yeah, well, fuck you, man.”

A little huff of a snort went off in Rust’s nose. He refilled the bottom of his mug.

 

“You got a girl back home?”

“Nah.”

“Oh.” Marty tilted his head, stabbed at the peaches inside of the tin can in his hand as he thought about it. “You gotta get yourself a girl, man.”

“Mm-hm,” said Rust.

“I’m engaged already. Girl named Maggie.”

“Yeah. Reckon you told me once. Or fifty fucking times. You afraid you’re gonna lose her, or what?”

Marty’s upper lip curled. “Christ, no. What are you implying here? What is that?”

“Man who talks about his girl all the time thinks he’s gonna lose her. What would be the point of talking her up otherwise to other guys, huh? Yeah, you’re scared, boy. You think something’s gonna go wrong.”

“Fuck you. Nothing’s going wrong.”

“Huh.”

“You know, she would _never_ … Not in a million years.”

“Nah. You said she’s a good girl. Fucking goes to church with you.”

“Then what the hell are you tryina say?”

“Just making conversation, is all.”

“Well, don’t.”

 

And then one night, that one night, they got to passing the bottle back and forth between them until Marty was laid out flat on his back by the fire, staring up dizzily at the stars overhead, listening as Rust whistled something pretty to himself.

“Too fucking late for you to head back over to you tent,” Marty said, shattering the long and peaceful quiet. “Got an extra blanket, though. You can stay here f’your not too worried about the sheep.”

“Mm. Thanks. We both aiming fit in that tent, though?”

“I can sleep out here. Not too cold. Doubt I’ll feel nothin anyways.”

Rust gave his little half-laugh, took another swig out of the bottle.

“Ah, you sure ‘bout that?”

“Yeah. M’sure.”

So Rust got up just a little while later, and put out the fire and brought Marty a blanket before he slid off his boots and bedded down.

It took two minutes before he could hear the sounds of Marty’s teeth chattering outside the tent. He poked his head out of the flap.

“Jesus Christ, get on in here,” he said. “You’re freezing your ass off out there,” and Marty didn’t need telling twice. He slid off his boots and crawled on in beside him.

It was warm in there, and dark, filled with the sounds of their breath and Marty, later, didn’t know quite how it happened, what had shifted and shattered between them, but he did know that as he lay there in the warm darkness, he could feel the shape of Rust’s cock slowly growing more and more distinct along the back of thigh, and, strangely enough, he didn’t mind. No, he didn’t mind at all. So he reached back a hand and found it through the fabric of Rust’s holey old blue jeans.

Rust moaned aloud: a soft, throaty, broken sound right against the back of Marty’s neck. And that was the end of it.

Marty pushed the heel of his palm down gently and Rust’s teeth grazed the vertebrae in his neck. And then he was scooting away, sitting up, and the soft clink of metal against metal told Marty he was unfastening his belt. Marty did the same. He thrust his pants around down his knees, and took Rust around his hips, and hauled him over.

It wasn’t anything you had to be taught how to do. He sat up, slicked himself with saliva, and ran his fingers gentle down the plane of Rust’s back. He felt him shiver beneath him, felt the muscles there tense and flutter, and then he grabbed on tight to his waist, bit his lip, hard, and, in one vicious motion, fucked into him, just like that. A little cry of pain, almost a sob, shot out between Rust’s lips.

A minute later Rust was hissing out a stream of curses like a prayer into the floor of the tent, a prayer into the earth, his fingers ripping at his own hair. Marty’s hipbones rocked up against his ass, drifted away again, his hands on Rust’s chest, feeling the pulse there like a bird fluttering hopeless against the bars of a cage. The only sounds were Rust’s snarled words, their frantic panting, the slap of skin against skin.

Marty took his hand and brought it around to Rust’s cock, twisted his hand over it gently and then, almost instantly, Rust was gone, a noise in his throat overspilling, loud and hoarse—and with that, Marty crested over the edge too, his head falling back and then forward again until his chin rested on his chest, his rhythm going desperate and chaotic.

And then it was over, and they were both panting, crashing down on their sides next to one another, Marty’s arm in the hollow between Rust’s ripcage and hipbone. It rose and fell fast with the harsh rhythm of his breath.

They were asleep almost instantly.

 

Marty woke with a blinding headache, stripped from the waist down, the tent full of the smell of sex and dirty skin. Rust lay curled naked in the curve of Marty’s body, the skin of his torso golden in the light falling in through the fabric. He was still asleep, or mostly, and Marty was suddenly struck almost breathless by the softness of him, of his skin and his eyelids and the sturdy rise-and-fall of his chest.

And then Rust was stirring, the lines of his face pulling up taut again, and Marty was up like a shot, yanking on his jeans. He went fast out the flap of the tent and stood in the cool morning air with his hands on his hips for a moment, looking out across the field where the sheep milled around. The grass was dewy under his bare feet.

By the time Rust got out, Marty had already got the fire blazing and was burning himself a single piece of toast on a stick. He grunted and coughed a gruff good morning. And Rust made that snort in his noise, the mocking noise of understanding as he went over to the tree with the plastic-wrapped trunk where they kept their food.

“Marty,” he said, sitting down slowly on the log across the fire. There was a little twitch in his face as he did. He had a poker and a piece of bread. “Y’know, I ain’t no fucking queer.”

“Yeah, well, me neither,” Marty snapped back, immediately. “No shit.”

“Yeah, so the way I see it,” Rust said, and Marty’s heart was thrumming hard and fast and scared in his chest now. “Nobody’s fucking business but our own. One-shot thing, huh?”

Marty glanced up at him, cleared his throat, looked back at the fire.

“You’re alright, Cohle.”

And that was that. And they both knew right then how it was going to be the rest of the summer.

Rust did his survey of the sheep in the morning, each morning, took the long loop around their grazing land and came back around lunch. They’d eat in silence, and then Rust would head off again. By dinner, they’d be warm enough that they’d talk a little, their span of conversation eventually growing wider and deeper—Marty told him everything he knew about Maggie (which turned out to be not that fucking much, according to Rust) and made Rust tell him a little about trapping hares (which turned out to be, Marty proclaimed, the single most boring thing anyone could ever talk about). Marty rattled off baseball stats like encyclopedia and wasn’t ever sure whether Rust had heard a word he’s said or not. Rust went on for nearly ten minutes—which was long time for Rust—about motorcycles, once. Another time, for even longer, he talked about the stars. Marty fucked him right there on the ground by the fire after hearing him say their names in his whistling, gravelly way.

They watched the sheep. They talked a little. Rust rarely, if ever, slept in his own tent after that night.

 

“You aiming to do this next summer?” Rust asked him one night, stretched out with his elbows propped up against one of the logs, bare toes nearly in the fire.

“Nah,” said Marty, quiet. “Me and Maggie’s gonna get married, settle in. I gotta get myself some steadier work.”

“Mmm,” said Rust. And that was all they said on the subject.

 

They turned in their tents and their horse and their mule and their dogs and their two big old rusted rifles. The man at Forest Services paid them okay. They both felt dirty and itchy and out-of-place in his office, back inside of the world.

“Well,” said Rust as they walked out into the parking lot, “see ya ‘round.”

“See ya ‘round.”

And Rust nodded with his hard blue eyes fixed on the ground between them, put his hands in his pockets, and walked away.

Marty went the opposite direction. His pickup was waiting for him right where he’d parked it. He got in, turned the key. He back it out of the spot.

About five miles down the highway, he thought, honest to God, that his insides were about rip themselves out his chest and his gut, his stomach knotted up so bad that he just knew that he was about to vomit. He pulled off the side of the road, stopped the car, opened the door and leaned out, clutching his arms around himself. He was sweating all over, shaking, cold. He dry heaved a couple of times before he gave up, leaned back in his seat, and shut his eyes, letting the hot early-September air curl over his face.

By the time he got home, his cheeks were dry, but his eyes were still a little bit red.

 

Marty got married to Maggie in the spring, had her knocked up by the time September rolled around again. There was some relief in that, while she was pregnant. They lay far apart in bed at night; he still held her hand, small and pretty and warm, walking into church. He loved her. He did. (He did. He did. He loved her. She was his wife.) He got a job working in a hardware store, cropped his hair close and clean, took to wearing khakis. Maggie looked after the house, looked after Audrey once she was born. And then, two years later, after Maisie too.

Marty was a good father. He chased the girls around the back lawn, tied up a busted tire on the lowest branch of a tree for them to swing on, took them out for ice-cream when Maggie needed a night off. He sat them down in the backyard and taught him all the names of the stars. Marty loved his girls deeply, hugely, enormously, and that wasn’t a lie.

But six years after that summer out on Brokeback Mountain, he got a letter.

 _Dear Marty,_ it said, when he tore it open, hands shaking a little at sight of the return address, _Coming threw Riverton too visit my brother in Medford. Onedered if you were still around. –Rustin Cohle_

And that was all.

He sent his reply back an hour later.

 

On the day Rust was supposed to show up, Marty paced up and down the house with his hands in his pockets, peering out the windows up at the road, all the way to where it turned a curve. He had on his best shirt: a pale lavender polo-style job. His good jeans. His brown leather boots. Maggie suggested she hire a sitter, and that they go out to eat at the inn down the road. Marty told her that Rust wasn’t exactly the restaurant type, that he’d probably just go down to the roadhouse down in town with him if that was alright with her.

Rust’s truck—the red one, the red pickup he remembered, with its paint worn off on the hood—kicked up dust as it came down the road, and Marty was out on the porch in a second with something hot and bright welling up in his stomach, shutting the door behind him. The pickup stopped; the engine thrummed to a shuddering halt, and then Rust was getting out and coming over, taking the porch steps slow and even without looking up until he reached the top.

“Marty,” he said, and then something in his countenance broke, and the space between them closed, their arms fastening so hard around each other that they swayed on their feet, Marty clapping his palm against Rust’s back over and over, muttering, “Jesus Christ, Jesus fucking Christ, you son of a bitch, Jesus Christ.”

And then Rust was shoving him backwards against the wall of the house witch a thud, the shutters rattling, his mouth knocking so hard against Marty’s that the back of his head cracked against the wood.

“Fuck,” he breathed, hot breath in Marty’s throat. “Fuck.”

The door opened.

Maggie was standing there in her bare feet, looking at them with absolutely no expression on her face whatsoever, and what could Marty do but straighten up, clear his throat and say, “Maggie. Maggie, this is Rust. I ain’t seen him in… six years. Six whole years,” as if that would explain exactly what was going on.

Rust took a step backwards, held out his hand with his eyes lowered.

“Real pleasure to fin’lly make your acquaintance, ma’am,” he said.

And Maggie nodded without taking the hand, her teeth white and glinting in the porch light. She turned around and went back inside.

Marty glanced over at Rust.

“Let’s go,” he said.

 

They didn’t waste much time on catching up; it didn’t matter. They got a handle of whiskey and a motel room, and extent of their communication for a while after that were the sounds—unforgotten and still familiar Marty after all this time—of Rust’s hisses and moans. They lay curled up in one another all night after, Marty’s forehead against Rust’s chest, Rust’s hand splayed out over the back of Marty’s skull, one of his legs still draped over his hip. There was rain thrashing against the window, but they hardly even noticed.

 

In the morning, they lay side-by-side, panting, still drenched in one another’s sweat, watching the ceiling in silence until Rust said, “Hey, Marty?”

Marty’s eyes had been falling shut again. It took him a moment to respond.

“Yeah.”

“I tell you something?”

“Mm.”

“I ain’t got a brother in Medford. Ain’t even got a brother.”

And at that, Marty dissolved into chuckles, warmth rising up from his belly to his chest. The edges of Rust’s lips curled into something close to a smile.

“Missed you too.”

“Mmm.” And Rust nodded, the smile fading.

He sat up and shook a cigarette out from the pack on the side table, lit it up with a sharp inhale and a click before he sank down again, slow, beside Marty. Smoke curled up to the ceiling.

“Marty, I reckon we oughtta talk about what the fuck we’re aiming to do here.”

His eyes were serious when Marty glanced over his way.

“What’re you talking about?”

“I mean, what’re we gonna do about this, huh? You and me?”

Marty plucked the cigarette out from between his fingers.

“Nothin, man,” he said, and took a drag. “We ain’t gonna do nothin. The fuck we need to do, huh?”

Rust was quiet, watching the ceiling with those hard, blue eyes. They looked tireder nowadays, almost unbelievably tired. So much older than the Rust Marty had kept in his mind all these years.

“You got a girl back home, man?” he asked, just to change the subject.

“I did.”

“Aw, what happened?”

“Our kid died.”

Marty sat up, thought the better of it halfway up and stilled, then sat up all the way. He looked Rust. Then he looked at the curtains. He looked back at Rust.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “I am so sorry, Rust.”

Rust swallowed, nodded hard twice. He took his cigarette back out of Marty’s fingers.

“Look,” he said, quietly. “What if we did it, huh? You ‘n’ me, alright? Just… got ourselves a little farm up in Taylor’s Creek, coupla cattle, some veal calves… little sturdy operation. I know a guy lookin to sell just the place. Nice little ranch house, you know?”

Marty leaned back, closed his eyes. He shook his head, slowly.

“No,” he said. “No. No, no, no.”

“You would, though. You fucking would.”

“You’re talking out your ass, man. And, look, I know you’re upset. You been through a lot—”

That laugh, that short little bark of a laugh that Marty’d almost forgotten about, spilled rough out of Rust’s lips.

“You talking to yourself, or to me?”

And Marty sat up, swung his legs off the bed and stared hard at the wall.

“I got kids. Two little girls. And a wife. I can’t just— And, y’know, we do that in the wrong place, man, we end up with our dicks stuffed down our throats in the bottom of a river somewhere. God, you’ve seen what they do to guys who pull that shit; you must’ve; you’re not an idiot.”

Rust was silent for a long minute.

“So we gotta be like this, huh. I come see you once every six fucking years.”

“Nah,” said Marty, and he turned again, settled his hand over Rust’s where it was pressed, palm-down on the bed. “Nah, son of a bitch, c’mon. I’ll take a few days off right now, a’right? You ‘n’ me go fishing.” He laughed. “Fishing. I’ll tell Maggie right now. Go home and get my fucking tacklebox, even.”

 

 

Three years. A chasm gradually widened between Maggie and her husband. He kept up his fishing trips with Rust. Once a season. She took up a job cleaning at a hospital far off in another town, began working some nights, and then most nights, until Marty found, quite suddenly, one day that she’d packed his bags and left them for him on the front porch.

He settled into a little trailer in a park on the border between two towns. She married a doctor and moved into an enormous old ranch with what seemed like a thousand acres of land surrounding it and took the girls with her.

He ate over some nights at their house in order to talk with his girls until she asked him one night, furious and soft in the kitchen, how _Rustin_ was doing and he slapped her, hard, across the face. After that stopped speaking to her altogether.

 

Marty widened around the middle, lost most of the hair on the top of his head. Rust became steadily thinner, more hard and wiry and bitter-edged, let his hair grow out long until he kept it in a ponytail at the base of his neck, cultivated a mustache of hair that was more softly grey these days than brown. They still saw each other three or four times a year, scoping out a new location every time. Hiking, fishing, camping. One time Rust even took him hare-trapping, though they spent more time lying beneath various trees in the middle of the bramble-choked woods, looking up at patches of sky through the branches.

Marty, now, was leaning in the window of Rust’s pickup, already started and ready to head off.

“Rust, I gotta tell you something,” he said. “Can’t make it in June.”

There was nothing readable in Rust’s blue eyes when he looked over at him.

“The fuck do you mean, you can’t make it in June? We been talkin ‘bout that for days; you never said nothing.”

“Yeah, well, the job’s picking up. Maybe July I’ll be able to—”

“You know what? Fuck you, Marty. Fuck you.”

“Yeah? Well, fuck you too.”

But he didn’t move away from the window, watching Rust’s face as he shook his head and looked stonily out the windshield.

“Y’know,” he said eventually, “we oughtta get outta here.”

“Yeah?” Marty asked him, his upper lips drawn tight in irritable skepticism. “And go where, huh? Where the fuck can we go, Rust?”

Rust thought about it for a minute.

“We could go up to Alaska,” he murmured. “Hear it’s real lonesome up there. Nobody around for miles.”

A little scoff snorted out of Marty’s nose.

“Be cold as hell.”

“Yeah.”

Marty shook his head.

They were both silent for a long moment before Marty rapped on the side of his car.

“Call you,” he said.

Rust nodded.

He started up the car, rolled up the window as Marty stepped away from it.

And Marty watched him drive away for the last time.

 

Rust didn’t call, didn’t answer his calls. He kept trying. He sent him mail. It came back, unopened, without explanation. He called him again. And again. And again.

Marty got the letter two months later. He tore it open with shaking hands when he saw the return address, the blue-printed Hippocratic seal on the envelope.

 _Martin Hart,_ it said in generic type, _We regret to inform you that there has been an accident…_

***

Marty’s still sitting at the kitchen table a quarter of an hour later, feeding the crusts of his toast to the dog. He’s halfway through his second cup of coffee, still yawning and bleary-eyed when a pair of sock-covered feet shuffle into the kitchen.

“Fucking cold as hell,” Rust mutters. He’s standing there rubbing his eyes in the doorway, six feet of long, lean muscle and skin gone paler than old times with the lack of sunlight, a nasty pink scar still fresh in the center of his stomach. He stretches and yawns, then he’s crossing past Marty into the kitchen and swinging a fake punch at his jaw as he goes. Marty dodges it, grabs his wrist, but Rust lifts it to his mouth, bites down.

“Ow. Fuck you.” And the edges of Rust’s lips quirk up, just ever-so-slightly.

“We still got coffee?”

“Yeah. Made you some. Over here.”

Rust sits down, takes the mug that Marty passes him gladly. He wraps his palms around it.

“Fucking cold as hell,” he repeats, miserably.

“Uh-huh.” Marty’s tired of hearing it. He hears it every day, hundreds of times, probably. But it was Rust’s idea to move to goddamn, middle-of-nowhere, “fucking cold as hell” Alaska. Not his.

“You gonna be on time for your flight?” Rust asks, confused, once he’s got a little coffee in him and has checked the clock.

Marty grimaces, tilts his head one way, then the other.

“Roads’re pretty bad.”

“So when you heading out?”

“Might not,” Marty says, and Rust full out smiles this time, looks down into his coffee.

“Gotta think up a Christmas present for you pretty quick then,” he tells him, looking back up.

And Marty runs his tongue over his lower lip, tries not to laugh.

“Think I can come up with one or two ideas,” he says.

**Author's Note:**

> I had a lot of ideas bouncing around in my head for this fic, this one included, since @blackeyedblonde had specifically requested that somebody write it after I'd told her I was reading it in class. And then this (http://jackaalope.tumblr.com/post/104368113124/speaking-of-that-post-i-just-reblogged-more) happened and I was like, "Alright. That's the one. Let's do it."


End file.
